Posted: August 8, 2014
By VIC BRADSHAW
HARRISONBURG — More home sales were completed locally in July than in any month in almost seven years, with buyers scooping up an average of nearly four houses a day.
Multiple Listing Service data compiled and analyzed by Scott Rogers in his local housing market report (available at harrisonburghousingtoday.com) shows that 120 home sales were completed last month. That, he said, is the most sales to close in any month since August 2007.
Rogers, an associate broker with Funkhouser Real Estate Group, and others had predicted a July sales spike because of the number of contracts signed in June (145, at least a three-year high) and May (135).
Enough of those contracts led to sales that the 82-month high was reached for the Harrisonburg-Rockingham County market, and sales could remain strong for at least another month.
“Sometimes sales are closing the following month,” Rogers said, “but often it’s two months later. I don’t know if we’ve even seen the bulk of that big number of contracts flush out of the system yet.”
The MLS data includes all broker-assisted sales in the two jurisdictions. Sale-by-owner transaction and contract builds with a homebuilder aren’t included in the data, he said.
The 120 sales were 7.1 percent more than the 112 transactions that closed in July 2013 and well above the sales posted in July 2012 (94) and July 2011 (77).
Contract activity wasn’t nearly as great in July as in the previous two months, with 112 potential buyers submitting bids on homes. However, aside from May and June, that number of contracts was more than were signed in any month since May 2013.
The recent sales surge has been evident at Old Dominion Realty, broker/owner Mike Pugh said.
“We’ve seen considerably more activity this year than we did last year,” said Pugh, whose firm sells real estate in nine Virginia and West Virginia counties. “We’ve had three months of record sales in our company.”
Still Behind For Year
Despite strong sales in June (108 units sold) and July, housing sales haven’t quite overcome the deficits accumulated in the early months of 2014, when the prolonged winter suppressed activity, as compared to 2013.
For the year, 564 homes had been sold in the city and county through July 31. In the first seven months of 2013, the total was 587.
Still, the year-to-date sales total was well above the pace through July in 2012 (480) and 2011 (443).
Rogers said he expects that 4 percent gap to be closed further, if not eliminated, in August and September.
The median sales price for a home in July ($199,250) was relatively flat compared with the figure for July 2013 ($199,455). The average days on the market, however, dropped 7.3 percent year-over-year, to 101 this July from 109 in July 2013.
Pugh said in the areas Old Dominion serves, average sales prices seem to be increasing, and local sales are far stronger than those nationally, according to data he’s studied.
“What we’re doing compared to the national statistics is staggering,” he said. “We’re doing much, much better than most other areas of the country.”
Positive National Forecasts
The Federal Reserve System, Pugh added, is forecasting new home sales nationally to spike to 525,000 in 2015 from a projected 455,000 this year. Median new home prices also are projected to trend upward, to $281,000 in 2015 from $275,000 in 2014.
While recent sales figures in Harrisonburg and Rockingham County have been positive, Rogers said the fact that total sales through July still trail 2013’s pace and the relatively flat median sales price reflect a market that still exhibits signs of weakness.
“Though sale prices are not declining, they’re also not going up yet as we’d expect to see in a relatively balanced market,” he said. “I think we’re well out of the woods in terms of a downturn in the market and are in a great place in comparison to the last few years, but we’re not yet in a robust market with sales and prices growing.”
Contact Vic Bradshaw at 574-6279 or [email protected]
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